19th century

Imaginative author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in his 1884 essay, A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured, “If you love art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock’s…”[1] The toy theatre was a beloved pastime in 19th-century England that appealed to the creativity and craftsmanship of children and adults. Benjamin Pollock inherited his...

Researching a work in the collection can lead a curator to some very interesting places other than libraries. I was fortunate to have been in Berlin on May 14, 2015 which was the anniversary of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s death in 1847. I had corresponded previously with Thomas Lackmann, a descendant of Fanny Hensel’s and board...

While researching one of our printer-dyer record books for the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition Multiple Choice: From Sample to Product, I discovered a curious fabric swatch on page 105. The fragment shows two incomplete figures in Japanese-style dress and includes the text “Dude Never Would Be Missed” and “Got Him On My List.” Both phrases are lyrics...

Frederic Edwin Church, Sunset across the Hudson Valley, 1870. object number 1917-4-582-a Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s collection of over 2,000 oil sketches and graphite drawings by Frederic Church was mentioned recently in the New York Times in connection with the reopening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing. According to the Met’s Curator of...

From its inception, exuberant, organic, and sensuous rococo style has inspired subsequent revivals and new movements. As rococo’s influence once again gains momentum, Cooper-Hewitt invites scholars Laura Auricchio and Paul Greenhalgh to discuss the social and cultural histories behind rococo in eighteenth-century France and its revival in Art Nouveau at the end of the nineteenth...